Impact of Feeding Behavior on Biological and Productive Properties of Tuva Ram Lambs

Abstract

Sheep breeding is of great importance for the Tuva Republic. The sheep population exceeds 1.2 million heads. Surveys were carried out to find out the additional reserves for increasing lamb meat production. The typological structure was defined with the method based on the motor response to feeding, which was developed by D.K. Belyaev and V.N. Martynova (1973) and improved by V.S. Zarytovsky and M.I. Liev (1990). It provides the allocation of three behavioral types described as strong early maturing even-tempered, strong early maturing short-tempered, and weak late-maturing for the first, second, and third behavioral types, respectively. The ram lambs of group one were at definite advantages over the animals of groups two and three. Thus, increases in the carcass fresh weight, the slaughter weight, and the carcass yield comprised 0.92 and 1.85 kg (3.32 and 6.82%), 0.97 and 1.90 kg (3.58 and 7.00%), and 1.80 and 2.06%, respectively. The percentages of carcass meat and bone tissues varied within 69.61–69.96 and 16.46–17.36%, respectively. The rise in lamb population and the use of ram lambs of the first feeding behavioral type (strong early maturing even-tempered) contributed to increasing the potential of lamb meat production. The findings based on the complex survey results prove the dependency of traits of economic importance on the type of animal feeding behavior. Therefore, the survey findings supported by scientific knowledge can contribute to improving the indigenous short fat-tailed sheep of Tuva breed and to developing recommendations based on the feeding-behavioral type information.